The sustainable land imaging SLI program was established as an interagency partnership between NASA and USGS in 2014 to ensure continuity of moderate resolution, landsat like land observations for the…

This federal contract award supports the Sustainable Land Imaging (SLI) program, an interagency partnership between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) established in 2014 to ensure continuity of moderate resolution, Landsat-like land observations for the next 30 years. This $495,887.39 cost-plus-fixed-fee delivery order contract was awarded to The Aerospace Corporation, a non-profit federally funded research and development center, to provide support for the SLI Architecture Studies Team (AST). The AST is chartered to assess user needs, instrument options, and mission architectures for future SLI missions after the launch of Landsat 9 in December 2020. The contract tasks include aerospace cost modeling, risk assessment, and business model evaluation to help ensure a sustainable SLI program. This contract does not have a set-aside designation.

The sustainable land imaging SLI program was established as an interagency partnership between NASA and USGS in 2014 to ensure continuity of moderate resolution, landsat like land observations for the following 30 years. Landsat 9, the first SLI mission, is under development and is scheduled to launch in december 2020. NASA and USGS are now starting to discuss options for landsat 9 follow on. An architecture studies team AST is being set up in order to assess user needs, instrument options, and mission architectures for future SLI missions. In general, the AST is chartered to provide a small number of mission configurations that maximize satisfaction of user needs while maintaining cost constraints for both the space and ground system segments. The AST consists of NASA, USGS, and aerospace personnel about 10 members and activities will extend through summer 2019. A key part of the asts work is to assess the cost and risk including TRL of any potential mission solution. In addition, the AST will recommend business models to help ensure a sustainable program. These might include block buys of instruments or satellites, use of secondary or hosted payloads, international partnerships, commercial data purchase, and or reduced government oversight. This task provides support for aerospace cost modeling, risk assessment, and business model assessment to support the landsat SLI AST.